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Defying warped values and ideology

"One morning two months ago, Shamsia Husseini and her sister were walking through the muddy streets to the local girls' school when a man pulled alongside on a motorcycle and posed what seemed like an ordinary question.

"Are you going to school?" Then the man pulled Shamsia's burqa from her head and sprayed her face with burning acid. Scars, jagged and discolored, are now spread across Shamsia's eyelids and most of her left cheek. These days, her vision goes blurry, making it hard to read.

But if the acid attacks against Shamsia and 14 other students and teachers, which carried the tell-tale marks of the Taliban, were meant to terrorize the girls into staying home, they appear to have failed completely."

So begins a piece in the IHT on the actions of the Taliban in trying to prevent girls going to school - and how, despite horrendous injuries, schoolgirls and their parents, are being defiant and not cowed. Read the piece "Afghan girls brave terror to return to school" here.

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